It's Okay Mommy

We've been hearing, "It's Okay, Mommy/Daddy" a lot lately whenever we tell Hannah to either do something or stop doing something and she doesn't want to obey. We've really cracked down on the "NO!" so she's been censoring herself a bit and has switched it up to "It's ok" AKA I'm not going to do what you want me to do. I plan on doing whatever I want to do. Though it's pretty creative and it does make me want to laugh sometimes it's driving me crazy. I keep having to take deep breaths to stop from going off the deep end.

To top things off, it's getting really frustrating (for both Kyle and I and Hannah) that Hannah can't hear. We are only 1 week into our 4 week wait before we head back to the ENT and I find myself constantly wondering how on earth we are going to make it that long if her hearing doesn't start improving on its own before then. It's to the point that we basically have to shout everything we say to Hannah VERY slowly and 3-4 times before she comprehends what we've said. I listened to her talk to my mom on the phone today and it was all I could do to not laugh as I heard Hannah saying, "Huh?" over and over and over again. I lost count while trying to keep track of the number of times she said, "I can't hear you." My poor girl. :(

On a happy note, we had Hannah's first parent teacher conference at her new preschool last week and we came away from it feeling very pleased. They do assessments on the children every 3 months using a skills inventory based on their age in months. When Hannah started she was 2 standard deviations below the norm in the social and emotional areas. Now, 6 months later, she's scoring completely at grade/age level in both of those areas! YAHOO! Now I know we aren't out of the woods yet and that some of her deficits will become more apparent as the social demands grow, but this assessment confirmed what I was already observing which is Hannah is making great strides in her social skills under the guidance of her teachers. I am so proud of my little girl. And to boast a little bit more, she also maxed out her scores on all the verbal, academic, fine motor, and gross motor skills on the assessment as well. :) The only "bad" thing the teacher had to tell us was that Hannah often "questions authority" AKA she's stubborn as all get out! and has a hard time listening to her teachers when she doesn't want to do something. The good news is that even though she often balks at what she's told to do, they aren't seeing any meltdowns when they push the issue and make her do it anyway. She saves that for us! When Miss Karyl was explaining about the gross motor portion of the assessment, one of the skills listed was throwing a ball overhand. I asked if they needed to have any aim at this point or just be able to chuck it wherever it will go. Karyl assured me that chucking it was just fine at this point and then told us a little story. She said that Hannah is actually developing quite good aim from playing with one of the other little boys in the class. Because of the extremely cold weather the kids haven't been able to go out on the playground very often so they've been spending a lot of time in the gross motor/sensory room. They have a kid's basketball net in there and Karyl pointed it out and said that Hannah plays with the hoop a lot because "Antonio is a big fan of playing basketball and Hannah is a big fan of Antonio!" I had to laugh about that one because it's true. Hannah is definitely a big fan of Antonio. Those two are like two peas in a pod. My girl really does like her boys. Practically all of her "friends" are boys and sadly this has always been the case. Even as an infant, she's always preferred men over women. I'm looking for this boy crazy trait to diminish a bit soon, but I won't hold my breath. As a side note, I had a note about this little story written down on some scrap paper to remind me to put in on the blog and Hannah found it and read perfectly and without any help, "Antonio is a big fan of basketball and Hannah is a big fan of Antonio!" and then laughed like crazy! UGH! Now I not only can't spell words out loud that I don't want her to know, but I have to be careful what I write down and where I leave it. I may just have to start writing anything I don't want her to read in cursive! Seriously, I shouldn't be having this problem with a 3 year old!

This past weekend the full moon wreaked havoc in our house. Hannah was WIRED to the max. She was running around and shrieking and jumping, and singing at the top of her lungs and grabbing everything she could touch. I thought I was going to go crazy. At one point I was trying to get her to try on some summer clothes from last year to see if any of them still fit (so far only a few do!) and I could not get her to stay near me long enough to get one article of clothing off and another one on before she was off and running all over the place. I found myself becoming almost hysterical and grabbed her by the waist and gave her a little shake and said quite manically "Hannah! CALM DOWN!" Kyle came into the room at that point and said, "Natalie, don't shake the child." It was then that I realized I was over the edge and I needed to pass her off for a little bit or I was going to lose it. I think things are back to normal now, but really it remains to be seen. She had a rough morning getting ready for school, but that's not unusual. We'll see how she is when she gets back from school. It's not too terribly cold outside (in the 20s as opposed to the single digits before the windchill) so maybe they'll get some extra playtime outside to run the crazies out of her.